The present invention is directed generally to telecommunications and, more particularly, to a system and method for establishing a telephone communication link using status reporting information from an independent computer network.
Telephone communication systems have increased in both size and complexity. Early telephone systems required a human operator to manually connect an originating telephone with a destination telephone. With the introduction of automatic switching technology, the need for human operators to connect each and every call disappeared. However, even automated switches did not provide the wide range of features available on most telephone systems, such as voicemail, caller identification, call waiting, call forwarding, three-way calling and the like. Most telephone systems today include these features and allow the customer to select one or more features to customize their telephone service. With features such as voicemail, the telephone switching system must recognize when the destination telephone is either busy or remains unanswered. If either of these conditions occur, the calling party is routed to the voicemail service associated with the destination telephone.
Despite these improvements, telephone systems are incapable of determining when a particular recipient (i.e., a callee) may be available to receive a call. The caller has no choice but to place a call to the destination telephone and hope that the callee answers. Alternatively, the caller may leave a voicemail indicating a specific time at which the caller will place yet another call. This is an undesirable activity since it requires multiple calls, thus utilizing telecommunication capabilities in an inefficient manner. In addition, repeated or failed attempts to actually reach the callee are a waste of human resources since the parties must often call back and forth to each other a number of times before actually reaching the desired party. Therefore, it can be appreciated that there is a significant need for a system and method that can establish a telephone communication link when both parties are available to communicate. The present invention provides this and other advantages as will be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying figures.
A system to specify user-selectable criteria for call processing is implemented on a telephone system, such as a public switched telephone network (PSTN). The user-specified call processing criteria is stored on a network that is accessible by the user for data entry and/or editing, and is also accessible by the PSTN to determine whether call processing criteria exists for the particular caller. The Internet provides a readily available data structure for storage of the user-selectable call processing criteria. The user can establish a database stored on the Internet in association with the user""s telephone number and indicating the user-selectable call processing criteria for one or more potential callers.
The caller may be identified by caller identification data, such as automatic number identification (ANI). Based on the destination telephone number and the caller identification data, the PSTN accesses the Internet and examines an affiliation list corresponding to the destination telephone number. If the caller identification data is present in the affiliation list, the call may be processed in accordance with the user-specified criteria for that particular caller.
Both the caller and callee can specify user-selectable call processing criteria. The potential callee can specify call processing criteria for all incoming calls, such as providing a list of individuals from whom the person will accept calls, a list of individuals from whom the person will not accept calls, or conditional criteria, such as accepting or blocking calls during certain times of day or during certain periods of activity, such as when the user may be otherwise occupied and unwilling to accept an incoming call. In addition, the potential callee""s computer activity may be monitored and the status of the computer as idle or active may be reported to the computer network. The caller indicates a desire to establish a communication link with the callee. The computer network accesses the caller""s call processing criteria and the callee""s call processing criteria. The call processing criteria for both the caller and callee are analyzed and when all conditions are met, a telephone communication link is established between an originating telephone associated with the caller and a destination telephone associated with the callee.